Car Insurance Discounts

Practically every car insurance provider offers car insurance discounts or preferred rates for a variety of reasons. If you already have a policy in place, make sure you immediately contact your insurer and ask if you have the maximum number of discounts you can possibly have. If not, find out the types of discounts it offers and make sure you become eligible for as many as possible. Quite often a simple act like joining your local PTA for $5 yearly will save you 5 to 10% on your annual insurance premium.

If you are in the market for car insurance, it pays to be aware that each insurer offers different discounts. This often accounts for the difference in price that you will find from one insurer to another. Therefore, you will need to get a variety of quotes from different insurers in order to see the true difference made by those various discounts.

Some of the discounts you can expect to find include the following:

Good driver

Good student

Member of certain groups

Low mileage

All drivers over a certain age

Multi-line coverage

Multiple vehicle coverage

Completion of a driver training course

Being claims free

Opting for automated debit payments

Insurance Policy Changes

In order to keep your car insurance costs low enough to be affordable in your budget, you will probably need to make some changes to your policy. This is easily a way to get significant breaks on your car insurance premiums. However, you must be ready to face the consequences of such decisions if you need to make a claim. You will have more out of pocket expenses.

Be prepared to remove unnecessary coverage from your policy. You may have a full coverage policy and be paying for things such as towing and labor coverage, rental reimbursement and more. By cutting such extras you will get a small reduction in your annual premium. If you have an older vehicle that is no longer financed and has a lower value, remove collision and comprehensive coverage. There comes a certain point in the life of a car when it makes more sense financially to not pay the extra for these types of coverage because what you will get after the deductible is paid is not significant enough to bother with.

If your car still has a decent value or it is financed and the lender requires full coverage, you can still save on the cost of your car insurance policy by raising your deductibles. Higher deductibles will result in lower premiums. Just be sure you can afford the deductible if you were to have an accident.

Another policy change that you can make, but it is not advised, is to carry only the minimum amount of coverage as required by the state in which you live. Most full coverage policies are written with liability coverage in the amounts of $100,000 bodily injury coverage per person, $300,000 bodily injury coverage in total per accident and $100,000 property damage coverage. Mandatory coverage limits are much lower and therefore much less expensive. This is a last resort to save on your policy in order to avoid further fines and problems by not carrying insurance at all. However, remember that such minimums often prove to be insufficient in the case of serious accidents.

Shop Around

For anyone struggling to pay for car insurance the number one solution is to shop around for the best price possible on the coverage you want to carry. If the prices you find still do not fit in your budget, shop around again for the best price possible on the minimum coverage you can get away with after increasing deductibles, removing unnecessary coverage and when all else fails, reducing your coverage to state limits.

To make shopping around quick and easy, opt to use a free online quote tool, which does the work for you. Simply input your zip code and answer the questions you will be asked in order to get custom quotes just for you. Get started now with our online quote tool to help you find car insurance you don’t have to struggle to pay for.